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magazine / jf00
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January/February 2000 issue |
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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
Deflating the myths of the seal wars
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| Blooded by the battle: IFAW’s national director Rick Smith with Ray Guy and seal pelts.
(Photo: Brian Atkinson)
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MATCHING the right writer to the right story is as tricky as driving
on black ice. Even the most skilful wordsmiths brake and skid on the
wrong topics. So when we asked ourselves who could — or would,
for that matter — cover the seal wars for us, we pondered the
pitfalls and hesitated for months before an alert mind in the editorial
group came up with the idea of Ray Guy.
Who better to cover the seal wars for us than St. John’s-based
journalist and author Ray Guy? For three decades now he has been reporting
on the jousting and lunacy that is repeated every spring on the ice
pack off the Newfoundland coast and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. "It
is two brands of paranoia," Guy told us when we called him, "smacking
up against each other." Listen to the rhetoric of Newfoundland’s
fisheries minister John Efford, speaking in the House of Assembly: "I
would like to see the six million seals or whatever number is out there,
killed and sold, or destroyed or burned. I do not care what happens
to them. The more they kill the better I will love it." He sounds
even more inflammatory than some of the activists who, it often seems,
delight in rubbing our faces in the gore of the hunt.
It didn’t take a lot of coaxing to get Guy to accept our assignment,
travel to the ice with the minister and, later, with the International
Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which has been the leading critic of
the hunt. Thankfully, Guy has a thick skin. By the time he turned in
his story, he had been labelled a "traitor to my race and an enemy
of the people" of Newfoundland. He was also rattled by a local
television reporter who showed up at his house seeking a comment on
what he had witnessed on the ice with IFAW. A general remark he made
rumour-spiralled into a specific accusation and before the day ended,
threats of lawsuits were flying.
Somewhere between Efford and IFAW, between the Newfoundland chauvinists
rallying to the minister’s intemperance and the animal rights
people who are cheering on IFAW’s opposition to commercial hunting
of seals and other species, lie the hearts and minds of most concerned
Canadians. There is no national consensus that would support a ban on
commercial hunting and trapping, and many people are concerned about
the survival of the outports. But does that mean we should subsidize
sealing? Evidence may show seals eat cod, but are they blocking the
recovery of the cod industry? Or is mismanagement of the cod fishery
to blame?
Guy’s report, packaged with a timeline and fact boxes prepared
by staff researcher Mary Vincent, offers readers the long view. Considering
the money spent every year on public relations and advertising, on helicopters
and hotel rooms, on overtime for the coast guard and the RCMP, on sealing
subsidies and studies, a review of the big picture seems overdue. In
it, we advance no tidy solution to the hostilities, but Guy’s
mockery of its absurdities should deflate some of the myths and misunderstandings
that have accumulated during this 30-year tug-of-war.
READERS SEEKING our "Directions" department at the back of
the magazine will now find a bright new version of it on the pages immediately
after the table of contents. Renamed "Inside CG," the
new section will include accounts of expeditions, lectures and other
initiatives supported by The
Royal Canadian Geographical Society, as well as news about Canadian
Geographic book, television and Internet projects. As our online
editor Elizabeth Shilts likes to remind us, we are much more than a
magazine.
— Rick Boychuk
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